Charlotte Mayoral Candidate: Vote For Me, I’m White!

Kimberley Paige Barnette—which is honestly a perfect name for this story—is running for mayor of Charlotte, NC. She is a magistrate in Mecklenburg County, and she recently offered an interesting pitch for her candidacy on Facebook:

“VOTE FOR ME! REPUBLICAN & SMART, WHITE, TRADITIONAL.”

On one hand, this is just redundant posting—she already said she was Republican. (Rim shot.) But more offensive is the idea that “white” is somehow a political attribute. “Oh, she’s white!” Barnette likely imagined her potential constituents remarking. “I’m white too! I trust her!”

Anyway, Barnette was going to lose anyway, and this is kind of a dumb story about a dumb person. Except for, you know, the implication—white nationalism is on the rise, Trump is president, and little incidents like this just add to the mounting evidence that white supremacy is becoming a bona fide thing in America, even in the relative mainstream.

For what it’s worth, the state GOP—a truly heinous collection of individuals in their own right—condemned Barnette. They prefer their racism to come in the form of gerrymandering and voter suppression, apparently. Not Facebook.